Recycling of used materials has greatly increased over the years. Indeed, a much larger variety of materials are now being recycled unlike several years ago when aluminum and glass were the primary recyclable materials. However, because of this variety, the task of identifying and recovering usable materials requires sorting garbage and trash by hand. In turn, this need for manual labor to identify and sort materials greatly increases the costs associated with recycling.
Devices and methods have been developed to assist in the recycling process. One example is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,219,127 ("Bielicki"). The Bielicki patent discloses a ferrous material element which is attached to a tab device of an aluminum can and which is magnetically responsive to a magnetic field. Since the ferrous material element is magnetically responsive to a magnetic field, the element attached to the tab device allows for the aluminum can to be extracted from trash and waste material when an outside magnetic field is applied thereto.
However, the magnetic responsiveness of the ferrous material element of Bielicki only helps in recovery of recyclable containers from trash and waste material, and particularly, in the recovery of only one type of recyclable container, i.e., aluminum. The Bielicki patent does not disclose means for being able to identify a variety of different types of recyclable materials.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a responsive tag to identify a variety of different types of recyclable materials and containers.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide a responsive tag which is not noticeable or removable from recyclable materials or containers.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a responsive tag which is simple in design and economical to manufacture.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a responsive tag which can be incorporated in recyclable materials or containers at the place of manufacture.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide a responsive tag to minimize costs associated with recycling.